With the advent and development of the Internet network, including the World Wide Web and other connected sub-networks; the network interaction experience has been continually enriched over the years and much development continues. In a large part, network users, both veteran and novice have a basic human commonality in that they all share three basic desires that materialize into behavioral traits when engaging in network-enhanced interaction. These behavioral traits are the desire for communication with others, the desire to collect and/or acquire digital content, and the desire to collaborate with others to help solve some problem or to resolve an issue. As behavioral traits, these basic needs can be expanded into many sub-categories. Communication includes interaction over channels such as Instant Messaging (IM), email, posting boards, chat, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), analog voice, etc. Collection includes collecting art, knowledge, music, photographs, software, news, and so on. Collaboration includes group discussions, task fulfillment, and any other collective efforts to solve a problem or perform a function. In basic form communication, collection, and collaboration are very tightly intertwined as basic desires.
Software providers have long recognized the need to fulfill these basic desires by providing the capabilities in a single interface and have provided many well-known communication applications that provide access to casual and business communication as well as collaboration and file transfer capabilities. Programs like Net-Meeting™ and ICQ™, among many others attempt to aggregate these capabilities into a single accessible interface some times integrating separate communications applications for single point launching.
Users generally belong to a variety of communities and social organizations that may or may not be tightly structured or organized. For example, a user may have family and friends in their on-line address book along with work associates from the job (two communities that should be separated). The same user may belong to a church group and a golf group, or some other sports group. The same user may also volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center. However loosely formed and organized, these separate groups often have a central Web presence, for example, a Web site, posting board, or the like. Likewise many of the group members or associates also have individual on-line capabilities like ISP accounts, email addresses and so on.
A user associated with more than one group logically has varying personas or faces that he or she presents to each group. Moreover, the user may logically be willing to share only varying degrees and depth of information with these separate groups largely restricted to the subject matter(s) appropriate to the group. For example, the user's family members and close friends would not share the same type and depth of information as the user's work associates, or the user's wildlife rehab associates. It may be desired by a user, and in fact is logical to conclude that in association with these different groups that group boundaries should be respected with reference to communication channels and formal as well as informal information sharing.
A drawback to virtually all of the available communication channels whether they are separate channels or integrated into a communication application, is that a user may have to provide a basic permanent identity and profile for these programs to work successfully. For example, an email account generally requires a permanent email address that the user may have to maintain unless the account is to be abandoned. Using more than one email address generally requires more than one email account for a given user. Likewise instant message applications may require a standard email account and identity.
A software application is known to the inventor and referenced in the cross-reference section of this specification as “Methods and System for Creating and Managing Identity Oriented Networked Communication”. The software enables services for managing routing of communiqués across one or more communication channels supported by a data-packet-network. The software includes one or more workspaces for segregating communication activity; one or more unique user identities assigned per workspace; and one or more contact identities assigned to and approved to communicate with a workspace administrator of the one or more workspaces using the assigned user identities. In a preferred embodiment the application enforces a policy implicitly defined by the existing architecture of the workspaces and associated user and contact identities. The software enables contact identity and user identity pairing in management of the routing of a communiqué to a particular workspace. The identities are applicable to the supported communication channel or channels used in the communication.
One problem inherent to social interaction over a network is that it is often very strictly defined, highly organized, and largely proprietary in nature meaning that those collaborators who are part of a hosted networking group are typically bound to use certain applications and protocols as part of some proprietary framework for communication provided by a service host over other applications and protocols that might also be available.
Many socially active and interactive groups are, by definition, loose knit and therefore not highly structured, organized, or otherwise defined to an extent that would warrant such inflexible over-network collaboration provided by a typical collaboration host or intermediary. One exception to this general rule is Usenet described in some detail with reference to the U.S. patent application identified in the cross-reference section of this specification. The ubiquitous and loosely governed structure of Usenet provides a suitable spawning bed for forming loose knit, often temporary groups for social interaction that is inclusive of communication, collaboration, and digital collection.
User groups or Web communities who engage in group discussion, collaboration and digital collection activities using news group services, mailing lists, and other like facilities fall in at the opposite end of the scale from highly defined and structured proprietary services. For example, Usenet supports group interaction but does not provide any mechanism for the group to evolve into a more structured social group with a common purpose or common set of goals.
Both proprietary networking services and unstructured group interaction facilities tend to be more document-centric than identity-centric in different ways. For example, the proprietary framework of a service host may limit a VIP network of users, for example, to using selected protocols, applications, and security regimens according to defined and explicit rules and methods. Unstructured interaction services may lack the structure of security and rules of engagement in addition to an absence of variety in the types of applications and protocols supported.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a method and apparatus that would enable social interaction over a network in a way that solves the problems stated above.